Value Network Design for Innovations: Developing Alternative Value Network Drafts

摘要

Information technology increasingly permeates established products and services, thereby making them "smart". For companies, this trend necessitates new know-how in unknown fields. Hence, traditional manufacturing companies are increasingly forced to cooperate with new players within new value networks. In contradiction to value chains, value networks oftentimes exhibit no clear hierarchies and are characterized by rather weak ties between the participating players. For a company that wants to create smart products or services, the key challenge is arranging the value network such that the customer obtains a unique value while all participants profit from their engagement. In doing so, companies have to find new partners (companies, research institutes, etc.). In this article, we present a methodology to design value networks for innovations, including approaches to identify necessary competences, find suitable partners, and bundle them to powerful alternative value networks.